


Run the Clock Down

by HaneleHaralue



Series: ColdWestAllen Week 2016 [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, ColdWestAllen Week 2016, Multi, OT3, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Timers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-30 23:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8554603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaneleHaralue/pseuds/HaneleHaralue
Summary: "Fifteen years, nine months, five days, twenty-three hours, and twelve minutes."A boy, a girl, and a man get clocks on the night of Nora Allen's murder. Exactly none of them are happy about it.[ColdWestAllen Week 2016 Day 1: Soulmate AU]





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Cold Truth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5742409) by [Katyakora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katyakora/pseuds/Katyakora). 



> For ColdWestAllen Week 2016 Day 1: Soulmate AU
> 
> My first time writing this ship. I totally could have done better, but that would have required more sleep and time.
> 
> (Also, sorry about the formatting/spacing. I just. Don't know why it do?)

Barry is amazed that when the numbers on his wrist drop to nothing, it ends up being Iris West standing in front of him, with a grin on her face and a hand held out to shake. She's the most special person he's ever met. She has the prettiest cursive writing in class. She makes the best brownies with her dad and brings extra to share with him during lunch. She likes boxing and manages to scare off a bigger and older kid who tries to give them a hard time after school. And she’s the only one who tells him it’s cool that he can remember all of the names of the dinosaurs they learn about in class and more.

 

Dad and Mom say that he’s really lucky to have met his soulmate, the most special person in his life, so young. He agrees with all of his heart. Already, he can’t think of life without her, he’s so happy when they’re together. The boy just hopes that’s something he can keep.

 

Then the man in the lightning comes. His Mom is murdered. His Dad is taken to prison for it.

 

And that's not all he loses that night.

 

.

 

Iris wakes up with a jolt, sweaty and gross. She doesn't feel good. Something isn't right. Cold, she's cold, and her arm. Something's wrong with it. Yanking up her pajama sleeve, she tries to figure out what it is. At first, there's nothing she can see right away. And then she finally checks where her zeroes are supposed to be, so that she can be sure that everything is okay.

 

 

But that's the problem. Nothing is okay.

 

The zeroes aren't there. In their place, there's _15:09:05:2-_

 

She lets out a wail before she can even get through the last of the numbers. Her Dad's shouts for her reach her before he comes barreling through the door. He snatches her up to his chest and rocks her as she screams and cries. It takes a long time before she can do anything but that, and all she can manage is a whimper of "Barry" as she puts her wrist in his face to see.

 

Then he's giving her that face that he had when Mom died and asking her to be brave and call the police for him while he goes to check on the Allens. Shivering, she takes a deep breath and nods. As she's dialing, he pulls a jacket and shoes on and is out the door. She's sitting at the window that outlooks the street, handset to her ear as she watches her Dad run through the night to her best friend and soulmate's house.

 

Her eyes drop to her wrist as she tells the police operator the address she knows almost as well as her own, the lack of zeroes there making her feel colder than she had before.

 

.

 

Len's in the middle of a job when it happens. He tries to ignore it, but the sensation is enough to leave him a half step off in his plans for the duration of the job. It doesn't keep him from doing what he set out to do, and to everyone else on the crew, everything went off without a hitch. But he was off and he knows it, and that irks.

 

He waits until he's alone; no Mick and Lisa in bed (though he knows she's actually snuck out to a party). Then he's stripping off his coat, his top, and taking a good look at his arm where the feeling started. What his investigation yields has him stopping dead. There should have been unmarked skin where his hand meets his arm. Instead, there's a clock.

 

For a while, he just stands there, staring at it. Watching the numbers he'd never had before count down with fascination.

 

And a chilling dose of dread.

 

Twenty-eight years of crime and punishment have not left him the kind of person meant for whoever the sucker is at the end of this countdown. Once upon a time, he might have been waiting for even the chance of a clock. But it's too late now. He's too old to be waiting on someone new, especially for fifteen years. Clocks are for someone like his sister, who deserves a soulmate and more. More than what they've gotten so far.

 

With a snort, he pulls his shirt back on and dives back into the plans for the next heist.

 

.

 

They try. He and Iris, they try so hard. They try, and try, and try to go on like they were before. But they can't.

 

His Mom is dead. His Dad is in prison. And he and Iris aren't soulmates anymore.

 

Proof of that last bit is in the impossible new set of numbers lining their wrists ever since that awful night. It's still burned into his memory, how after his father was taken away and her dad Joe had brought him to live with them, that she'd approached him with tears in her eyes and arm bared. They'd bowed their heads together and wept long and hard over two fresh clocks with times that no longer matched.

 

They try and try and try to pretend they are still soulmates, but something is broken now.

 

It starts with the new clocks, a symbol of the break, the main target of his resentment. Cracks splinter out when he realizes Iris doesn't quite believe him when he says that his Dad is innocent of his Mom's murder. More when they're teenagers and, with tight smiles and lying eyes, agree that trying dating other people might be for the better. Further still when Iris begs him in senior year to come with her to Columbia and he tells her can't because he has to stay in Central City for his Dad.

 

Years later, after just meeting the Star City vigilante and not dying, he's feeling just crazy enough to try again with Iris if she is. His clock - reading just over two years time - be damned.

 

And then the Particle Accelerator explodes. And he's hit by lightning that puts him in a nine month coma. And even when he wakes up from that coma with superspeed, he's stuck at a standstill worrying about the return of the man in lightning as she keeps moving forward, and farther away.

 

.

 

_"There's been three people in this relationship. You, me, and Barry."_

 

Eddie doesn't realize how right about that he is. Every relationship Iris has ever had, whether he's been around physically or not, Barry's been there. A specter of a soulmate past, haunting her every time she tries to move on. She can't pretend to understand what that night did to him. All she does know is that something irrevocably changed, and it wasn't just their status as soulmates.

 

He's been - stuck is the best word she can think of. Her best friend and old soul mate has been stuck in the past while she keeps trying to live in the now. No matter what she tries, she can't pull him there with her. It's part of what she likes about being with Eddie. He's constant, steady, present. She can just be with him.

 

Except, she still feels guilty when she starts dating him while Barry's stuck in a coma. She would have wanted to talk to him about it first. An ugly, petulant part of her sneers at that. He's not her soulmate anymore, she doesn't owe him explanations, he missed his chance. And it's not like he's been very forthcoming since waking up, keeping secrets and lying to her.

 

Another part of her, whispering at the back of her mind, always pushes and prods at her about the clock. This future soulmate gives her as much pause about dating Eddie - who is so, so serious and devoted to her - as her old one does. When facing a decision of confronting her boyfriend about the ring she found after he went missing, she glances at the _00:07:18:09:13_ on her wrist.

 

She doesn't ask about it. He doesn't propose.

 

And then he dies, saving everyone, quietly whispering that he hopes she'll be happy with her soulmate as he presses the ring into her hand.

 

.

 

If anyone asks, he'll chalk his interest in the Flash up to the thrill, the exhilaration of facing a worthwhile adversary. He's never had as much fun with heists in his entire life as he does now, with the challenge of being a step or ten ahead of the Scarlet Speedster. Plans take a little longer now, accounting for the speed of the superhero's response time among the other usual obstacles of a normal job. It's worth it when he can trip the man in read up.

 

Again, if asked, all the time he spends combing through articles and blogs about the superhero is purely for research purposes. The Flash Alert he has set on his phone for convenience's sake. And actually interacting with ("Trolling," Lisa likes to correct) people on comment boards and forums? He's trying to branch out in his forms of entertainment.

 

In fact, he gets a real kick out of anonymously heckling one blogger in particular: Iris West. She's clearly a first timer at it. The original iteration of her blog, "The Streak Lives," has atrocious formatting and her posts lack in substance and evidence concerning their subject's existence. But she pumps out the more content than anyone else and is the only one who he can tell has actually met the superhero in person.

 

But what really he likes about Ms. West is that like the Flash, she rises to the challenge he presents. She can actually write and has the potential to do better, and she does with the right amount of gentle ("Ha!" Lisa exclaims) encouragement. Encouragement in the form of him leaving constructive criticisms on the format, the title, the prose style, on anything really in the comments. Soon his criticisms on the newly named "Saved by the Flash" gradually start giving way to little bits of praise.

 

These days he's genuinely glad for the distraction of her and the superhero, especially as the final count down of his clock creeps closer and closer.

 

.

 

Even with all the crazy going on with his Dad free, the new bad guy Zoom at large, and everything else, Barry can't help but be distracted by Leonard Snart. Captain Cold. His nemesis.

 

He has to keep reminding himself of that last bit, because ever since he had to help Snart save Lisa from the their own father, he can't look at him like he's just a criminal. There's good in the thief, he'd swear by it. And he's lying if he hadn't already been thinking that before. When he'd agreed to not kill anyone on heists anymore. Even during the mess at Ferris Air. Though Joe tries to talk him out of reading into that incident anything other than a betrayal, the other had saved him from being killed and possibly even from sacrificing his morals.

 

This pull he feels whenever he thinks of the man, it's something familiar. He won't even allow himself to think further on that familiarity, because if he's still being honest with himself, he know exactly what this feels like. It's something he only barely remembers after fifteen years and it's confusing that he feels it again now. Sometimes he checks his wrist just to make sure there are still numbers ticking down little by little.

 

Though, he's not completely sure whether it helps him make more or less sense of all of it.

 

Worse, Barry's just as confused concerning Iris. He'd been so sure that with Eddie, she'd definitively moved on from their unrealized soulmate bond. And he'd tried to follow her unspoken lead, with little success if his failed dating experiences with Linda and Patty were any indication. But she still hasn't looked at anyone since Eddie's death. As much as he hates it, that gives him hope that they can come back to each other and find happiness again.

 

But he reminds himself. Their times of waiting will soon be up. Should he even be hoping, when there's a soulmate out there waiting for either of them? Should he be letting himself get distracted by her, by Snart, or by this new soulmate, with a terrible new threat out there?

 

Barry tries not to let the parting words of the man in lightning, Eobard Thawne, come back and haunt him. But they do. They do.

 

_"You'll never be happy."_

 

.

 

It might be unhealthy, the way Iris throws herself into investigations the way she does. Especially now that she needs to start over on both hands to count the times she's put herself in a dangerous situation in order to get a story. Her friends and family are worried about her. She doesn't blame them. However that doesn't stop her from giving her Dad the cold shoulder when he dares to suggest that her reckless behavior has to do with the ring she wears on the chain around her neck, nestled next to her mother's wedding band replica.

 

While it's true she's still mourning Eddie, she's also trying to do exactly as she's always done, which is keep living in the now. In her heart, she knows that's what her boyfriend had wanted for her. That, and to find happiness. And right now, her work, and a good mystery are exactly what she needs to work towards those goals.

 

Though she's pretty busy writing for Central City Picture News, she still runs her "Saved by the Flash" blog on the side even if it's become a joke knowing now that Barry is the Flash. She has some faithful fans who have stuck with the blog and even followed her transition to writing for the newspaper. One particularly infuriating but beloved one is the ever anonymous FrigidBrilliance, who still pushes her to up her game on both her articles and blog posts. The journalist is in equal measures amused and disturbed by the vast amount of knowledge her reader has to offer about how to safely pull off a covert breaking and entering. But grateful nonetheless when it comes in handy later on while looking into an underground human trafficking operation.

 

Her mystery when she's not working is trying to figure out Barry's clock. Only a year ago, their numbers had been off from one another. His had predicted that he'd meet his new soulmate just over a day after she'd meet her own, something he'd seemed overwhelmingly miserable about. But now whenever she catches sight of his clock, it's perfectly in sync with her own.

 

Did something happen to him? Was it the time travel? And she can't help but wonder, just a bit, could there be any significance behind his time now matching hers?

 

She's determined to find out. Though, she doesn't realize that she'd find her biggest lead on her mystery in the last place and from one of the last people she would have ever expected.

 

.

 

There were other ways Len could be spending Christmas. Pulling off a heist. Throwing back a beer with his sister and partner. Or rotting in jail.

 

Somehow, even though he's just gotten out, he's let himself into the house of someone who may just throw him right back into lockup. Sure, he owes Barry one after what he did for his sister. But he already has a dozen more ways of repayment thought up that that wouldn't jeopardize his ill gotten freedom so soon. He remembers though, that he does actually care about preventing that lunatic Trickster from unleashing all kinds of holy hell and mayhem on _his_ city. That can be his excuse for personally giving this warning, he thinks, as he sets up the tableau he wants the other man to walk in on.

 

Nothing to throw the enemy off like sitting in their living room, sipping cocoa from an obnoxiously cute reindeer mug.

 

(Thinking about the reaction he'll get out of Barry helps him not think about the timer on his wrist that is so close to completion.)

 

The added presence of the lovely Miss West when the other man arrives is unexpected. So is her reaction when, upon seeing him, is grabbing the speedster's arm and pulling it over to her. He doesn't have time to do or say anything in response because-

 

"Look," she orders, marching over and thrusting her and Barry's uncovered arms in front of him.

 

For once, he doesn't have a smart remark or pun to fall back on in this situation. Because zeroes line each of their wrists and he knows without a doubt that his own matches. That his zeroes happened the minute they stepped through the front door.

 

He could just ignore this, pretend his ignorant of what she's suggesting. Just say his piece about what Mark Mardon and James Jesse have planned for their Nightmare Before Christmas. But clearly, instead of the rational part of him that wants to stick with that plan, whatever sentimentality that had its claws in him earlier still has a hold on him.

 

Setting aside the mug, he pulls off the glove on his right hand and then tugs the sleeve up. He lines his wrist up with theirs, looks up at them, and waits.

 

.

 

"You-" Barry starts, and then stops.

 

Stops and stares at all three of their bared wrists. Then he glances at Iris biting her lip, and Snart - Leonard - watching them carefully. He's not sure what to think. Doesn't understand how this happened. But he'd like to find out. See if this can be start of him and Iris finding their way back to each other, and finally move forward together. Only, maybe this time with someone else, Leonard, coming with them.

 

.

 

There's something like panic lurking behind the infamous thief's eyes. He wants to run. She wants him to stick around, indefinitely. Indefinitely, since she's maybe not ready to think in terms of forever until she knows him a little more. Tentatively, Iris turns her hand over so that it lays on his, her fingers gently curling around his own. Her best friend - her soulmate again - thankfully follows her lead and lets his hand join with theirs.

 

She introduces herself before softly adding, "Stay?"

 

.

 

Fifteen years, nine months, five days, twenty-three hours, and twelve minutes.

 

That's how long it's been since Len got his clock. He remembers how he swore he'd walk away when the time came. Looking up at them, at their hands on his, he's still wondering if it's not too late. Too late for what though? To leave? To change his mind? His impulse control is already shaky enough when it's just the kid turning those hopeful green eyes on him. That control is gone under the gaze of both soulmates.

 

Soulmates he already knows, in one way or another, and might even admit to himself he might want. Soulmates he might get to have. If he stays.

 

He looks from Iris to Barry.

 

And then says, "Okay."

**Author's Note:**

> I may or may not revisit this prompt. I liked it, but like I said before, I could do more and better if given time and rest.
> 
> Also, my tired brain can't really say what parts exactly, but there's definitely some influence here from Katyakora's phenomenal ColdWestAllen fic "Cold Truth" because I've read it several times over and stuff gets unconsciously headcanoned something fierce doing that. Go and read that if you want more and better sooner.


End file.
